


Solstice

by ridorana



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: M/M, Spoilers, slightly canon-divergent from the tail-end of the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 13:19:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13167741
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ridorana/pseuds/ridorana
Summary: The war may be over, but for Vaan there’s still one thing left to take care of, and he won’t feel at peace until he tries to see it through.





	Solstice

**Author's Note:**

  * For [zellieda](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zellieda/gifts).



****_Wake up and s_ _ay good morning to that sleepy person lying next to you._  
  
_If there's no one there, then no one's there,_  
  
_But at least the war is over._  
  
_It's us—yes, we're back again_  
  
_Here to see you through, 'til the days end._  
  
_And if the night comes, and the night will come._  
  
_Well, at least the war is over._

 ****Vaan fumbles with the tunic’s final button and stares into the mirror, mouth quirking at his reflection. Formal attire never suited him, and it certainly doesn’t now. At the very least, he’s wearing his vest over it, so he doesn’t feel like a _complete_ fop.

“You look great,” Penelo chimes from her vantage point at the door, and Vaan turns to see her dressed and ready. She is beautiful, picture-perfect for the evening’s celebration, and Vaan breaks into a smile, toothy and wide.

“So do you, Pen.”

Penelo approaches him from across the room, a dancer’s stride nothing short of graceful. She reaches up to adjust the starch press of his collar with some minute taste for perfection Vaan could never understand. When she’s satisfied with her whim, she gives it a solid pat, and looks up at her friend.

“We should get going. The coronation starts soon and I’m not going to let us be late for it.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’re not gonna be late. No way am I missing out on my medal.” Vaan snickers as Penelo swats his arm, a little _too_ hard. “Hey, joking.” Kind of.

"Try to behave, please? I’m sure Ashe will have enough on her hands with Balthier and Fran around.”

_Balthier and Fran._

Vaan’s smile slowly fades from his face, and he clears his throat. When he speaks again, his voice is softer.

“D’you think they’ll show up?”

“Vaan, they’re back,” Penelo insists, her voice gentle, and she runs her hand through Vaan’s hair to smooth it out. “I promise they’ll show. They said they would the other night at dinner. Besides, I don’t think they’d stand up Ashe at her own coronation, _and_ their honorary ceremony, to boot.”

“ _Our_ honorary ceremony,” Vaan mutters. He gazes at the floor and takes a deep breath. “We helped, too,” he adds in what would certainly be considered Understatement of the Year by his standards. Semantics aside, his thoughts swim into a gnarled mess; beneath the surface lies trepidation at the possibility that Balthier and Fran might not show after all.

It’s been a year. And they finally returned, not even a week ago.

He still can’t believe it.  

News of their survival came earlier this week, smiting him swiftly, and days later he is still reeling from the aftershock. At times he wonders if it had all been just a dream - the two sky pirates sneaking up on them both during a tune-up of the Strahl in its private hangar and effectively scaring them both to pieces before shock gave way to unbridled, bird-light joy - but he’s asked Penelo to pinch him enough that he’s come to realize it somehow isn’t a dream after all.

“Helloo? Sky-dock to Vaan? Do you read me?” Penelo prods, and Vaan shakes his head.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “It’s just...” _It’s just what_ ? Just nothing, just _everything_ , just the man Vaan had fallen head over hormone-hopped, teenage-heels for disappears only to resurface mere days before Ashe’s coronation, earning himself a welcome-wagon and a spot at the honorary ceremony, all while waltzing around in his tight leather pants again as if he _hadn’t_ just played _dead_ for a year.

Yeah. It’s _just that_.

But Penelo knows. With her, he doesn’t have to say.

“Vaan,” Penelo starts, an edge to her voice that’s nearly chiding. “You spent your year pining and grieving. I was there. I was there for every minute of it.”

She holds him into a strong embrace, turning her head so not to smudge her makeup on his vest. When she’s through, she pins him with blue eyes earnest and open as the sky. “Balthier is back now. It’s time to decide what you’re going to do about it. And hurry up, will you? Or we’ll be late.”

Vaan lets her drag him away. Out into the late-day sun the rusty cogs of an old fantasy crank back to life within his headspace; Balthier is alive, and if he shows up tonight, there’s no way Vaan’s going to let himself hold back any longer.

The war may be over, but for Vaan there’s still one thing left to take care of, and he won’t feel at peace until he tries to see it through.

\--

Vaan is paralyzed in a strange sort of fear as he faces a crowd that stretches as far as he can see. Atop the stage it feels like all eyes are on him, standing behind the Queen of Dalmasca.

He swallows, thickly and audibly.

“Easy there,” Balthier murmurs to his left. The man’s velvet drawl pulls Vaan from his stage-fright-induced spell and into another realm altogether, one that ignites a flurry in the pit of his belly; being under Balthier’s attention again is not, entirely, that different from stage fright.

But at least he’s here after all. Penelo was right. She stands next to Vaan, and next to her is Fran, silent and tall and lovely.

Before them all, the entirety of Dalmasca, it seems, watches on as their new Queen speaks of the heroes who saved her kingdom and escorted her safely back to Rabanastre one year ago.

“Surprised you showed,” Vaan whispers from the corner of his mouth as some anonymous official takes the podium to drone on about honor and heroes, and crap he’s heard all before.

“Are you? Eludes me, that; I’ve waited long enough for my proper recognition.”

“You sure have.” Vaan’s voice falls flat, but Balthier does not choose to acknowledge it, here in front of the entirety of Rabanastre at sunset.

There’s so much more he wants to say, but Vaan - even Vaan - knows that now is not the time.

It’s enough that Balthier showed at all, and Vaan lets that warmth light his smile as Ashe turns to approach them, a trail of medals hanging from her sword-arm.

She is the most beautiful queen Vaan could ever imagine, and he is humbled by her for the first time in his ignorant little life.

When Ashe glides towards Vaan, he returns her subtle smile twofold. She lowers the ribbon, weighted down by a hefty gold medallion, past the crown of his head until it settles firmly on his shoulders. When she pulls away to tend to Penelo and Fran, Vaan nearly doubles over at how heavy it is; his eyes nearly bug out of his head, and he hears Balthier chuckle lowly.

“Mine’s bigger.” Balthier murmurs, barely audible over the congratulatory cacophony for a righted Queen and her heroes.

Vaan turns to look at him. In the dying sunlight, Balthier is gilded and gorgeous and _alive_ , wearing that coeurl grin as if he’d never left at all. He’s taller still - he always will be, probably, and even though Vaan hit another growth spurt in the past year, he still has to look up at the older man.

That’s fine, really. He’s happy to be looking at him at all.

The applause rains on them like a deluge, like a hundred-thousand birds taking flight at once, and it’s here, before the entirety of the kingdom they risked their lives to save, that the fledgling sky pirate decides he’s done waiting on the sidelines for what he wants.

He knows, now. Now, more than ever.

“See you at the bar later?” Vaan asks as the ceremony closes. The crowd begins to disperse, and brilliant song breaks out into the skies from the orchestra pit as the sun stretches blood-red fingers across the horizon. Balthier offers him an insouciant wave, joining Fran who nods and smiles back at Vaan. He turns his head only minutely to the side.

“We'll be there.”

Vaan watches him disappear into the crowd and finds that for the second time today, he’s dearly hoping like a lovestruck little fool that a sky pirate keeps true to his word.

\--

The Sandsea is fit to burst at the seams, and Vaan is sure he’s never seen it so packed in his entire life. If the sheer volume of bodies don’t break down the walls, the clamor certainly might; the desert boy is barely able to hear himself think over the din of congratulatory Dalmascans surrounding him (Tomaj, in particular, is feeling _especially_ fond of Vaan tonight and won’t stop hanging off his arm). Amidst the thick crowd, Vaan can make out Fran’s towering ears down below from his perch upstairs, and next to her floats the telltale plait of Penelo’s flaxen tresses.

But they’re not who he’s looking for.

Balthier is no challenge to zone in on, in a sea of fair Dalmascan hair. Vaan watches him slink up to the bar, his swagger maddeningly insouciant as he makes the feat of squeezing between a sweaty Seeq and a bangaa look graceful. Vaan takes that as his cue, and chugs the hefty three-quarters of his ale down in record time, only idly listening to Tomaj’s chatter above the deafening commotion.

“Hey, where’re you--” Tomaj starts, but Vaan just shoves the empty ale glass into the barkeep’s hand before throwing himself into the fray, sifting through the crowd to head downstairs. There’s a haste that pushes him through the mass of bodies towards the bar, and he doesn’t bother with apologies as he shoves his way to the front, spitting himself out from some anonymous pocket of bodies right next to Balthier.

“You know, if being smothered under the Bahamut did not kill me, this crowd just might,” Balthier nearly has to shout to Vaan, but he’s smiling as he nurses his drink. Vaan thinks he looks beautiful - so maddeningly, damnably beautiful.

The bartender places a cocktail on the tired wood for the woman next to Vaan, but she’s distracted with a conversation amongst her friends. With a swift arc of his hand, Vaan swipes it from behind her, and brings it to his lips. At this point he doesn’t care what he’s drinking. Anything will help.

“Wanna beat this place, then?” he offers upfront with a shrug. Balthier braces himself as a wayward drunkard stumbles into him.

“As much as our new queen would frown upon drinking in her streets, I may just take you up on that.”

Vaan’s grin is instant around the rim of his glass, and his eyes sparkle in the dim magicite lanterns strung lazily behind the bar. “Follow me. I know somewhere we can go.”

\---

“Considering this celebration was held in honor of us, you’d think it would’ve proven harder to get away,” Balthier says under the night sky peppered with stars. They’re on the roof of the Sandsea, seated on stray, hollow storage crates, and though the royal city’s buildings tower around them, the sky stretches overhead, wearing moonglow and starlight. Balthier releases a sigh and Vaan sees the tension deflate from his shoulders as he stares up at the view. He never did like crowds.

“In case you forgot, Balthier, this was Ashe’s coronation too,” Vaan reminds him with a snort and a nudge. Balthier chuckles into his drink as he drains it further, and brings his hand up to the medal on his chest.

“And a very merry congratulations to us all. Though I am surprised at our Queen; this whole medallion foofaraw really isn’t my style.”

“Yeah? What would you have picked?” Vaan runs his hand along his own medal, feeling the crisp ribbon stretched down his chest.

“Oh, something a bit more...timeless. My visage, perhaps, cast in gold at the centre of your lovely city.”

Vaan snorts. “Nah. That’s still way too subtle for your flashy tastes.” It’s easy, almost annoyingly so, to fall back into banter so seamlessly with the man again; as though he hadn’t just played dead for a year, effectively ripping out the stitches Vaan had only just begun to patch in the wake of Reks’ murder. “Gonna sell it then?”

“Heaven forfend! No. It will make a fine paperweight. Maybe Fran can hang hers over the centre console of the Strahl.”

Vaan holds his own medal up to the moonlight and turns it this way and that. It _is_ heavy, and thick - made of pure gold. The sheer volume of its worth suddenly weighs it further, too much for his liking, and he lowers it slowly.

“Something wrong?” Balthier queries, and Vaan wants to outright laugh. Where does he start with that question? But no, he chooses the route easiest for now, and gazes down at the medal pressed heavily to his chest.

“Nothing. I mean. It’s weird, y’know? I could feed the entirety of Lowtown for a year with this thing around my neck.”

Balthier hums thoughtfully, and places his drink on the crate before leaning in to inspect Vaan’s medal. At the proximity, Vaan’s breath catches. He smells the scent of aftershave, of gel in his hair, of leather, of just--by the mist, of _Balthier_ \-- and he wonders if the pirate can hear his heartbeat against the medallion as he inspects it. Vaan knows he himself certainly can.

“Unless this trinket is foil-wrapped chocolate moonlighting as a medallion, I fail to see how it would feed anyone, Vaan,” he responds, and he drops it from his hold for it to thud onto Vaan’s chest. The Dalmascan chuckles, though it’s hollow. “Take it for what it is - _recognition_ , and not further burden upon whatever this self-assigned guilt of yours is.”

A quiet moment passes that Vaan fills with liquor. Now’s not the time for sobering thoughts. Hastily he takes a sip from his drink, and feels the ice melt upon his lips.

“Hey Balthier?” Vaan starts, his voice smaller now. Below them, the hum of Rabanastre’s nightlife floats up like firelight, and in their quiet little orbit Vaan finally asks, “Where’ve you been, the past year?”

Balthier’s wry smile offers nothing but a pretty view, and Vaan realizes with a facade like that, he won't get his answer tonight. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“I would,” the Dalmascan admits immediately. He clenches his glass. “I really want to know. But more than that, there’s something else I think I want more.”

“Is there?” Balthier turns to regard him fully, and Vaan swallows, flitting his gaze to hide in the night shadows.

“D’you remember, more than a year ago - before Jahara, you asked me what it was that I wanted, what it was that I was looking for?”

“Yes,” Balthier answers, a gentle nudge when Vaan pauses.

“Well,” a sharp intake of breath, and on the exhale as he finally looks at Balthier bathed the purple-gold glow of Rabanastre’s night, “I think I figured it out.”

“And what is that?”

Balthier _knows_. He knows, and it’s in the surety of his gaze that flits from Vaan’s lips to his eyes, and Vaan thinks it’s now or never. With a clatter he discards his empty glass to the side and surges forward, pressing his mouth to Balthier’s in a firm and desperate kiss.

The first thing Vaan notices about Balthier's lips is that they're very, very soft. It almost seems inappropriate to press into them with such reckless abandon, especially when Balthier makes no move to return or deny the sentiment. Despite that, Vaan moves his mouth over the pirate's with all the pent-up desire that's been within him since his first visit to Bhujerba almost two years ago, where he could only blame the altitude for his bashful dizziness for so long until he came to terms with his horrid fate - that he was a mess for this man. From then on, it was a swift fall into an infatuation that rivaled anything Vaan had ever felt, an infatuation which grew like a weed and refused to rot even when rumour of Balthier's death alongside Fran was enough to render him a hollow shell of a boy.

It’s a quick kiss, too quick for what he wants, but Vaan pulls away and feels the hum of his lips drawn to Balthier’s like a magnet. Between them passes a split, terrifying second where Balthier freezes, and Vaan feels cold mortification creep through his nerves. But then his amber eyes soften and he purrs,

“Is this what you planned all along, spiriting me away to your little rooftop hideout?”

It’s all Vaan needs, and he’s back on Balthier’s mouth again, messy and heedless. “You complaining?” he breathes in between kisses, and Balthier nips at his lower lip to still him.

“If I’m to complain, you’d certainly know of it.” So far so good, then - Balthier doesn’t complain when Vaan pushes him back fully onto the crates, doesn’t complain when Vaan’s greedy thief-fingers sift through his hair like gold, and doesn’t even complain when Vaan kisses him dizzy on the roof of some dinky tavern.

Vaan’s hair, spun golden by the Dalmascan sun, curtains Balthier’s face as they kiss; by the time Vaan pulls away, his smile is plain as day from the work of the pirate’s tongue and lips. Balthier doesn't look to be having a terrible time either.

“As charming as your operation to seduce me on a pile of crates is, might I interest you in wooing me elsewhere? Perhaps some place, oh, I don’t know, not on a pile of crates?”

Ah, and there’s the complaint. It was only a matter of time. Vaan cages Balthier in his arms splayed on either side of him and laughs before saying, for the second time that night,

“Follow me. I know somewhere we can go.”

When the Dalmascan stands and reaches out, Balthier takes his hand, and Vaan doesn’t let it go.

\---

“It’s not much, but it’s home. I can manage to rent this place now thanks to those hunts.” Vaan locks the door behind them as he herds Balthier into his modest flat above the neighboring shop. His bed sits in the corner by the window, a rumpled unmade nest of sheets and overly-stuffed pillows. The modest room is furnished with merely one other necessity; a nightstand, upon which sits a magicite lamp and a vase of Galbana lilies. Strewn armor huddles in a corner heap, and various weapons lean along the weathered wall. Vaan feels Balthier scan the meager accommodations and thinks the ostentatious Archadian-bred ponce might up and change his mind about the entire thing. “I mean, it’s no Strahl, but--”

“There’s a bed big enough for two, and that’s suitable enough,” Balthier cuts through his stammer, and then they’re on the mattress, Vaan grinning with a lapful of pirate like some wet dream come true.

“It’s a good thing we’re on the same page here,” Balthier says between lazy kisses along Vaan’s shoulder as he toes off his own shoes. “If you weren’t going to pounce I surely would have.”

Vaan whines as Balthier unearths a patch of flesh beneath the tunic’s collar to suck on his neck hard. He arches into it, stretching to give the pirate better access to that sweet-sensitive spot right by his collarbone. Dammit, he doesn’t care if hickeys are so fifteen-years-old, he wants to be covered in bruises from this man’s mouth by morning. “Why didn’t you, then? Earlier, before-- _everything_ ,” he manages to rasp out of his taut throat as Balthier presses flat against him, sinking them further into the bed.

“Not sure if you recall, but we happened to be in the midst of all-out war for the encompassing majority of our time together.” Balthier wrests Vaan’s vest off of him and drops it over the bed’s edge. “That, and, the Strahl is no place for a tryst. The walls are too thin to host a proper romp, and with Fran’s fragile disposition it would have sent the old girl into cardiac arrest.”

“Walls are thin here too,” Vaan says impishly, lifting his head from the pillows to capture Balthier’s mouth again. He hears Balthier chuckle, and when they pull away, the sky pirate wears a wolfish smirk.

“Then let’s give them all a show, then, shall we? No need for secrets any longer.” He kisses Vaan again, deeply, the slide of his tongue hot and good as he unbuttons his shirt with nimble fingers.

Vaan’s desert-baked skin glows in comparison the starch white tunic, now open fully down the middle. The medallion sits heavily at his sternum.

“Should we take these things off?”

“No,” Balthier says, a bit too quickly as he wriggles out of his pants and throws them across the room. Vaan stares at Balthier’s erection pressing a handsome bulge to his undergarments, and his breath catches. “Keep it on. Everything else goes.”

“You’re weird,” Vaan muses, and Balthier winks.

“We’re only just getting started, darling.” He hovers over Vaan like a bird of prey to swoop down and suck on his neck again, moving to sift his hands under the blonde’s tunic before his fingers freeze beneath the fabric. Balthier wrenches his head away from Vaan’s flesh, and furrows his brow at the sight below.

“Is that my shirt?” he asks incredulously. Vaan throws back his head and laughs.

“You only just noticed?”

“Well, you _are_ rather distracting.”

“It looks pretty good on me. Admit it,” Vaan grins cheekily, and Balthier glares as Vaan starts to wriggle out of it.

“That’s custom-tailored and Dorstonis cotton. Just up and helped yourself to my things on the Strahl, did you?”

The light line of banter snaps between them right then, and Vaan’s smile is cut from his face like marionette strings. Vaan stops his movement out of the tunic; the lust simmers down and he stares into the blank white fabric still clinging to his arms. “I,” he starts, running his thumb along a cufflink. “I...”

The blood hammering through his veins slows and Vaan loses himself in a reverie that pulls at him like an undertow. He thinks back to endless nights curled in on himself atop Balthier’s bed, the only anchor to the hungry swallow of his impending grief being the crisp cotton of his clothing against Vaan’s skin; the smell of gunpowder and sandalwood which faded from the threads all too soon.

When Penelo donned her black hair ribbon three months in, once Bahamut had been named a memorial littered across the Ester like a scar, Vaan had taken off on his chocobo so far and so fast that his back ached with the journey and his mount protested bitterly, wheezing at the miles carved beneath its talons. When Penelo donned her black hair ribbon three months in, Vaan swam in the Nebra, drunk under the stars until he couldn’t remember which way was up.

From then on, the days had fallen away like dead leaves, and with no shade to take shelter under, Vaan could only burn beneath the sun.

“I thought you were--”

“Shhhh.” Balthier closes the gap between their bodies to rest atop him, and Vaan’s mouth snaps shut. Tender, all at once; a calloused warm thumb on his lips, Balthier’s hand perched beneath his chin as though he were a sparrow, but Vaan feels everything below the simple gesture, every horrible gnarling twist of wrought ugly pain that furls into smoke from the burning coals of his core. He draws in a shaky breath.

“Hush now.” Balthier’s voice is oddly soft; whether he means truly to be gentle, or if he’s putting it on for Vaan’s sake, the Dalmascan cannot decide. “Had you not listened to a word I’d said?” he queries, slipping the remainder of his tunic off Vaan’s broad, sunkissed shoulders. Vaan watches it slide off him distantly and fall to the floor in a surrender. “I told you the Leading Man never dies.”

Vaan’s staring at the floor. This isn’t the time and place for it, but he says it anyway: “You’re an ass.”

“I know,” Balthier concedes, and nuzzles beneath the slant of Vaan’s jawline to inhale his scent. “Fran has made many a point to remind me of it throughout these many months.”

“No, _really_ \--” Vaan starts, and oh _boy_ , now that they’re on the subject, does he ever want to start.

“Are you here to bed me or to scold me?” Balthier lifts his head and cuts through Vaan’s would-be tangent like a blade to grass. The spellbinding silence is but a second’s passing before Vaan thinks, to hell with it; he rolls them both over until the gunman is pinned beneath him and the mattress creaks in protest.

“Tired of waiting,” Vaan snarls before swooping down to cover Balthier in messy, maddened kisses. His mouth wanders everywhere; Balthier’s jaw, his neck, his collarbone, down to his smooth chest. “Tired of wishing I’d done this ages ago.” _I thought you were a corpse_ , the sentiment wrenches and twists at his heart and he presses closer to the man who has been a ghost for the better part of a year. “I’ve woken up every day this past week since you came back thinking this had all been a dream and it wasn’t, and I’m not letting you get away this time.” He punctuates his promise with a glare, though Balthier seems unfazed.

"Unless you’ve become blind in a year’s time, you’ll be pleased to see that I’m not trying to _get away_ from anything. I’m perfectly content with our current arrangement. More than content, if truth be told.” Vaan blinks down at the pilot framed by his pillow, and shudders as Balthier’s hand snakes its way to rest at the base of his neck. “Now kiss me, you impertinent brat, now that I know how good you are at it.”

Balthier’s honey-caramel lips suffuse an infectious warm glow akin to white magick and Vaan shudders into them, deepened with a slide of insistent tongue. His mouth moves against Vaan’s, easing him from the angry edge, coaxing him back into their private little realm. Vaan sighs, melting further into Balthier’s hold. The pirate’s touch wanders along Vaan’s body, igniting gooseflesh in the wake of his caress, and where Vaan sought control of the situation earlier he finds he’s now perfectly content for the older man to sculpt away at his musculature with articulate hands.

It’s when Vaan shifts that he feels Balthier’s hardness beneath his thigh as earnestly as he feels the own ache-strain of his erection, and he finally wrests away from their kiss to sit up and gasp for air.

He’s taken by the sight - Balthier, splayed and aroused beneath him, is a fantasy come true. A stray lock of hair teases the arch of his brow, and the sheen of the gold medallion is framed on either side by the two hardened nubs of his nipples. Vaan dips his head down to take one in his mouth. Balthier sighs and cards his hands through flaxen hair, and that’s enough of a sign for the Dalmascan to continue. He lingers there for a while, lips and tongue and the occasional hint of teeth that earns him a soft little sound, and Vaan smiles into his chest.

A final shake of his leg to wrest the leather pants off, a bit more fumbling thereafter, and then finally, _finally_ it’s bare skin on bare skin, and the two men sigh in unison as their bodies acquaint themselves with the new sensation. Vaan slides against Balthier, pressing to his every nuance of his body like a puzzle piece that he’s going to make fit even if it kills him. Balthier takes Vaan’s weight without protest and merely kisses him long and slow, reining in the Dalmascan’s fervent tempo until Vaan is pliant along him, mirroring the leisure pace in a show of trembling earnest.

Balthier’s touch grazes Vaan’s musclebound back and shoulders, whisper-soft as wind along the Ester’s dunes, cresting every jut of bone and muscle alike, until Vaan is shuddering for his touch to go lower, lower--

"You have slick?” Balthier queries, and Vaan thrusts his arm out to the bedside table where he yanks the meager drawer open to sift blindly through its innards. The vial is small but it will do, and Balthier snatches it with a greed that sends heat straight to Vaan’s balls. He watches Balthier coat his hands, and the pirate makes a right show of it, too - holding the vial up to the light and dribbling it onto his calloused fingers. Vaan’s entire body shudders as he coats the digits until they’re dripping.

“Now, where were we?”

Balthier’s fingers travel back between the cleft of Vaan’s ass and he arches, eager. The pad of one finger slides over his pucker and Vaan finds he’s mortified that he already has to bite back a moan. By the end of this he’ll be a mess, he’s sure of it.

Balthier prods once before pausing to catch Vaan’s gaze. “You’ve...done this before?”

“Uh, yeah,” Vaan answers - the short of it. If there’s one thing Vaan doesn’t need Balthier’s guiding introductory hand for, it would be this. It’s almost funny.

“Pity,” Balthier murmurs with a wry smile, resuming the circle of his slick, curious finger over Vaan’s entrance. “That would have been a treasure I’d taken great joy in plundering.”

“Too bad.” Vaan rocks back to the wandering digits prodding gentle circles at him. “Tomaj beat you to the punch.”

“Who?” Balthier queries as he pushes a finger in, deliberately slow. Vaan groans and bites his lip.

“No one.”

The angle isn’t ideal, but it’s good enough to get Vaan loose and debauched. Vaan takes the gentle push of Balthier’s index finger until the gunman is knuckle-deep, and Vaan takes in a breath through his nose.

“Another,” he says, all too soon. Below him, Balthier chuckles, a low rich sound that plays up Vaan’s spine like an instrument.

“Eager, aren’t we.” But he obliges anyway, drawing out his finger from beneath Vaan and pushing back in twofold.

“I think I made myself pretty clear on that,” the bedragged blonde rasps, and from his perch over Balthier, he lowers down to suck on the man’s throat. With his body stretched along Balthier’s, it proves better for the task at hand, and Balthier twists his wrist pleasantly in tandem with the curl of his fingers. Around the stretch, Vaan bites his lip and whimpers.

“More,” Vaan demands, and curls his greedy thief-fingers around Balthier’s cropped russet hair, making lazy purchase with his mouth along the clean slant of his jaw.

“Greedy thing. How can I deny such an illustrious request?” Vaan would smack him across his pompous Archadian head if he weren’t so enamored with their entire exchange, but he swallows his retort and offers Balthier an insistent little whine instead, one he knows is sickly-sweet from his throat. Balthier kisses him and plunges his fingers hard, wriggling the digits deep within Vaan’s tightness before all too soon straightening them out and hammering back in. Vaan goads him with broken gasps and _‘yeah’s_ peppered with the occasional keen of pleasure, until he can take it no longer. He lifts himself from the man until he’s upright again, and curls his hand around Balthier’s bejeweled wrist.

The look he gives the man is unbridled want and need; it’s wordless, the exchange between them. For a moment, Balthier looks speechless, staring up at Vaan with his full lips parted and cat-eyes flickering a hunger Vaan wants to sate over and over again.

“C’mon,” Vaan clenches around his fingers promisingly, and revels in the hiss Balthier sucks in through his perfect teeth. He’s probably not at this point, he probably needs more time, another finger, but despite it all he says, “I’m ready.”

Emptied of the pirate for now, Vaan does the honors of slicking up Balthier’s cock, good and thorough, until the noise that fills the room is so wanton that Vaan is nearly moaning with him. The flesh is hard and thick between the curl of his grip, and Vaan twists on the upstroke, milking out another soft sound of pleasure from the older man before Balthier’s hand stills him curtly.

“Get on with it, you insufferable tease.” His voice is taut, drawn like a bowstring, and Vaan wants to unravel him at the seams until he’s spread beneath him, begging.

Coated and glistening with lube, Balthier’s erection is a sight which beckons Vaan like a tidal wave; he wants to ride it, every crest, every wild, untamed breaker that renders him exhausted. He wants it now, wants _him_ now, more than any stupid wish he’s ever wanted in his young life.

And he can have it.

Vaan wonders briefly how he managed to really and truly bed the sky pirate Balthier; the sky pirate Balthier who, as everyone had come to believe, has been dead for the better part of a year, and even when he _wasn’t_ thought dead - even before Bahamut - he was just a wild fantasy Vaan visited in the secret of his dreams and nowhere else. The Dalmascan practically sways as the notion of their long-awaited intimacy smites him, shattering through the thick velvet curtain of lust clouding his headspace.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” Vaan says, finally, the words he never knew he’d have a chance to say. Balthier smiles up at him, and gives Vaan’s hardened cock a few slow strokes with his lubed hand. The Dalmascan bucks into it and shudders.

“I daresay you certainly have me now.”

He’s had these dreams before, he’s no stranger to this vision; Balthier, spread-legged, slicked with lube and sweat, aroused and erect, all for Vaan. But that Balthier had been merely an apparition, one which Vaan would wake from, alone and empty and aching in the wake of a death he could not accept.

It’s now that Vaan finally rises from the ashes of those days, born anew with a greedy touch which hungers to consume every inch of the gunman’s skin, hoard it all to himself like gold, gold he wants to bury deep, for him and him only.

Luckily for him, there’s a way to do that right now.

Vaan wipes the excess lube from his hands on the rumpled sheets, and scoots forward on his knees until he’s positioned above Balthier’s cock.

The split moment shared between them before the inevitable passes so quickly, but Vaan does not miss Balthier’s sharp intake of anticipation. Vaan rubs Balthier’s leaking cockhead against his entrance - back and forth, once and twice, before he finds the angle to sink down, low and slow.

Balthier’s response is deliciously instantaneous as Vaan’s heat molds around his cockhead. “ _Vaan,_ ” he groans out, and fists the sheets on either side of him. “Oh, you’re--yes, that’s it.”

The hot stretch of his hole around the Balthier’s thick girth is so good. It hurts, of course, it always does at first - and starting from this angle, no less. Tears prick at the corners of Vaan’s eyes as inch by inch finds home deeper. _Damn_ . He should have had Balthier’s fingers longer, added another one, but he was too eager - but he’s come this far and like _fuck_ if he’s a quitter. Vaan takes in a shuddering breath; it’ll feel good in a minute. He’s going to take every inch of this like it’s the gift it is.

Beneath the discomfort, however, is a fullness that grinds out a moan from the depths of Vaan’s chest, and by the time Balthier bottoms out, they’re both gasping for air.

Vaan locks onto Balthier’s like a lifeline, as if he expects the man below and within him to disappear. That’s usually what happens at this point - in his dreams, at least, this is usually where the fantasy ends. But instead Balthier reaches out, and runs his clean hand down Vaan’s chest, a mesmerized and unreadable veil on his softened features.

“It’s been almost impossible to keep my hands off you for the better part of nearly two years. You feel simply divine,” Balthier says, stunned from the clench of Vaan’s heat; and there are plenty of places Vaan could imagine himself smiling bashfully at praise but seated fully on top of Balthier’s cock is admittedly not one of them. Yet he does so anyway, gazing down at his hands on the pirate’s hips, and finds himself a strange mix of speechless and yet gloriously full.

“Why would you do such a dumb thing?” Vaan responds. With an experimental clench, Vaan watches Balthier toss his head back onto the pillows to groan, a catch between frustration and pleasure.

“Because,” Balthier chokes out,  “propriety is the devil. That, and Fran would have had my head.”

Below Vaan, he is gorgeous and raw, already disheveled and thrumming with animalistic desire Vaan can practically taste in the spike of his gaze. The magicite lamp at Vaan’s bedside casts light onto the glisten of spit lining Balthier’s open mouth, evidence of their messy kisses and slicking them for Vaan’s thumb to trace, mesmerized.

There have been plenty of times Vaan has fantasized what Balthier would look like in bed but nothing could compare to the real thing.

Balthier’s chest, ornamented in the centre proudly by the medal, rises and falls visibly as he struggles to catch his bearings--and the Dalmascan clenches again just because he can, reveling in the jolt it earns from the older man.

“I won’t tell if you won’t. Sky pirate’s honor.”

And then he starts to move, palms splayed out on Balthier’s shoulders as he lifts himself up slowly to grind down, slick and hot. It’s Vaan’s turn to let out a soft little “ _oh,”_ at the thick intrusion _,_ and he fills himself with the pirate to the root again--before rising to repeat the motion over and over and over.

“Gods _be_ , you tight little hellion,” Balthier commends, his dull nails now finding purchase on Vaan’s thighs to dig half-moon shapes into flesh. He drags his hands down the taut rippling muscle before sliding back up to hold his hips, and thrusts deep to fuck into Vaan.

They find their rhythm after some rather pleasant experimenting, and both men fall into it seamlessly. Balthier’s hands continue their restless journey across what expanse he can touch of the Dalmascan riding him, and Vaan watches as he struggles between keeping his eyes closed and never taking them off the sight above him.

"Balthier,” Vaan whimpers out as he slams down on his cock so hard that Vaan imagines he can feel it reverberate up to his very throat. He had wanted to say something else, but finds he forgot, so he just says the pirate’s name again. “ _Balthier._ ” He lets himself say it even once more, to feel the shape of the name on his tongue, to hear the echo of it in his room; the name he never let die even when everyone else had buried it in Bahamut. Vaan’s storm-blue eyes flutter shut behind sunkissed lashes and he loses himself in the moment, picking up his pace with a licentious cant of his hips.

“You look so good, Vaan, _yes_ , keep doing that,” Balthier gasps as Vaan bounces happily on his cock. His head falls back onto the pillows in surrender as Vaan pulls all the stops he can manage on the man beneath and within him. When Vaan’s hips gyrate on the uplift and slide back down with a backwards roll so slick that Balthier’s neck arches to the ceiling, the sound he makes in return is enough to make Vaan come without a hand on his cock.

“If you keep on like this, I’ll not last long,” Balthier manages to pant as Vaan continues the rhythm at a merciless pace, and Vaan smiles, all teeth as he fills himself with the pirate over and over again.

“Good. Good, I want you to come.” Vaan bites his lip as he angles his hips to hit his prostate, and he shouts out a moan. In surrender to the sensation, he falls onto Balthier’s body and fucks himself senseless on the man’s cock.

“Dirty minx,” Balthier growls, and with the new leverage he dicks into Vaan like a piston. “I should have known you’d like it like this.” The licentious edge to his words, husky and feral, causes Vaan’s cock to twitch hard between them. He grinds it desperately on Balthier’s abdomen, meeting each carnal snap of his hips with the same passion given until the room is filled with the sound of their sex.

“And you thought I was a virgin,” Vaan smirks next to Balthier’s ear before his coy facade shatters into open-mouthed ecstasy as the man finds him again and again and again. Each collision of Balthier’s hips against Vaan’s ass has the Dalmascan whimpering - they’re making an awful racket and Vaan’s medal colliding into Balthier’s doesn’t help. The cacophony of their tryst is messy and inharmonious and perfect.

Vaan wants to laugh - he wants to laugh because it’s funny, he wants to laugh because he’s never felt so good in his life, he wants to laugh because Balthier is alive and fucking him senseless while he rides his cock to the Cataract and back, but if he tries to laugh it just comes out as a series of choked moans in tandem with Balthier’s greedy plunge.

The pilot’s staccato thrusts hum out waves of white-hot pleasure like electric heat through Vaan’s limbs. It’s all-encompassing and his vision swims; the closeness, the brush of Balthier’s cockhead against his prostate with each drive of his hips, the very act itself of him beneath Vaan like this, beautiful and _alive_ and _his_ , brings Vaan’s hand to his cock like a magnet and he strokes himself in tandem with their rut.

He bounces on his ankles, upright again if only to finish them both off. Vaan’s hips roll to meet the impatient rise of Balthier’s hips as his free hand pumps his own cock desperately.

The air is thick with their sex, heady and all musk. Vaan breathes it in like a starved man, full lips open in slack-jawed pleasure, and he fills himself with Balthier as the pirate comes. It’s a long, powerful orgasm, Vaan can tell; Balthier’s body jolts like a Thunder spell to the spine and he grips Vaan like a tether to this very mortal plane, uttering noises Vaan has until now only ever dreamed of him making. The view has Vaan soon after spilling his own release, ropes of come painting the man’s abdomen in messy, inconsistent streaks until nothing is left but idle dribbles in the aftershocks dotting along Balthier’s pelvic bone.

Vaan collapses on Balthier and hears the hollow thud of his medal settle on the older man’s ribcage. They laugh, winded, and Vaan is heedless to the mess he’s made. Sweat and lube and come slick between them both and Vaan can’t remember ever being more disgusting and more content in his entire life.

They kiss; a long, drawn out indulgence between them both. The room is stiflingly hot, their mouths hotter, and when they pull away Vaan can see Balthier’s eyes glazed with the brimming amber of the afterglow. He’s smiling a lazy smile, and Vaan cannot help himself from the man’s mouth; he kisses Balthier again, finding that somehow each time is better than the last.

“I think you’ve earned yourself another medal,” Balthier jests, fondly patting Vaan’s rear.

“Yeah, for what? Loudest romp in Rabanastre?”

“That, and perhaps best, though don’t let it get to your head.”

Vaan groans as he pulls himself off of Balthier’s softening cock. He collapses astride him. “I’d say you already got enough to my head. I’m spent,” he sighs.

“Charming,” Balthier responds, now coming-to and realizing that he’s covered in sweat, lube, and Vaan’s come. “Do tell me that in this humble abode you possess what some of us call a shower.”

Vaan yawns. “Nah,” he says, and snuggles against Balthier’s arm. “You gotta hose yourself down outside.” He manages to hide his grin; even with his eyes closed he can feel the man’s snakelike gaze pierce him.

“Again, I do not think our Queen would quite appreciate her newly honored saviors making such a display upon her kingdom’s streets.”

“Would Ashe really be surprised, though? Anyway, shower’s over there - because I do have one, thanks very much,” Vaan gestures in absolutely no particular direction.

“Truly, you are blessed with an abundance of wealth.” Balthier rises from the bed and drops his medal on the floor as though it were discarded clothing; Vaan shifts to hang his on the bedpost.

Vaan hears him pad away into the washroom and turn on the tap. He’s grinning into the pillow, fucked-out and giddy, his body still humming echoes of the Balthier-induced bliss. He hops off the bed, a spring in his step, and joins him. Under the water’s hot spray they kiss again, and when Vaan holds the sky pirate as tight as his greedy arms can muster, Balthier returns the wet embrace twofold.

Later, in the darkness of Vaan’s flat, the only sound save for their breathing is that of the dying celebration fading outside on the streets far below. The desert boy’s legs tangle in Balthier’s as he rests his head on the man’s chest; their medals hang off the bedpost.

“I really missed you,” Vaan admits, rubbing his foot idly against Balthier’s as sleep begins to find him.

“I can hardly blame you. Who wouldn’t?” Balthier counters, which earns him a small kick from the Rabanastran. He chuckles, and then adds, “You don’t know how many times Fran had to nearly drag me by my ear away from the temptation of showing up at your bed during our little pilgrimage with the Princess.”

“Yeah, well, you’ve been missing out. Could’ve had this over a year ago.”

Vaan feels Balthier’s hands card through his hair and there’s something oddly familiar about the gesture despite it never having happened before. He leans into it, and closes his eyes. “Well, I daresay I have it now, don’t I.”

“Guess so. We still have to make up for lost time though,” Vaan adds, nipping at Balthier’s neck playfully. He feels the man smile even in the growing darkness.

“You know where to find me.”

It’s Vaan’s turn to smile, and it rivals that of any joy he has felt since the war as he holds Balthier tight. “I do now.”

 

_Lift your head and look out the window,_

_Stay that way for the rest of the day and watch the time go._

_Listen! The birds sing! Listen! The bells ring!_

_All the living are dead, and the dead are all living,_

_The war is over and we are beginning._


End file.
